Re: [seul-edu] Wireless Lab

[Leon Brooks <leon@brooks.fdns.net>]

On Sunday 10 March 2002 09:54, John L. Johnson wrote:
> Our school just implemented a wireless PC lab (20 laptops in a cart
> which plugs in to the LAN via CAT5 in the classroom. The funny thing is,
> we can't afford software for them (duh). At my suggestion, we installed
> Star Office 5.2 for Windows and it is great. Now for the major leap of
> faith...

> Would Linux support this type of lab configuration? I'm a new user to
> Linux and am dreaming about a grant to set up a wireless lab of 30
> laptops. Any input (yes, it is possible or forget it dude) would be
> great. If you have any ballpark dollar amounts that would be interesting
> too.

Provided that the LAN cards are supported under Linux, yes.

You probably also want to check out the video drivers and power management on 
the laptops by installing your favourite distro on one. If you try RH and it 
doesn't work, try Mandrake (wait a week or so, 8.2 is nearly out the door) or 
SuSE as they often have more and better drivers for bleeding-edge or weirder 
stuff.

If running StarOffice under Linux, I recommend at least 64M per machine (96MB 
runs nicely, using a light window manager like BlackBox, WindowMaker or 
XFCErather than Gnome, KDE or E helps a lot at 64MB) or stick a server on the 
cart and use the lappies as sort-of diskless workstations from it.

Cheers; Leon